Question

Is there a better way to iterate to my dictionary data without using 3 nested for loops like what I am currently doing given this data below? Btw, i am using python 2.6.

data = {'08132012': 
           {
            'id01': [{'code': '02343','status': 'P'},{'code': '03343','status': 'F'}],
            'id02': [{'code': '18141','status': 'F'},{'code': '07777','status': 'F'}]
           }
        }   

Here is the 3 for loops current code:

  for date in data:
      for id in data[date]:
          for trans in data[date][id]:
              print "Date: %s" % date
              print "Processing id: %s" % id
              print trans['code']
              print trans['status']

              //query to database

EDITED: valid data values

Answer 1

Given the nested nature of the data, I don’t think there’s any way avoid some nested loops somewhere.

However, you can avoid having to nest most of your program logic by writing a flattening generator for your data, like so:

def flatten(data):
    for date in data:
        for id in data[date]:
            for trans in data[date][id]:
                yield (date, id, trans)

def process(data):
    for date, id, trans in flatten(data):
        # do stuff with date, id, trans